Why do you seperate videogames as something new. Videogames are a form of games just like Movies are a form of theater. And table top RPGs were around for thousands of years.even some figurines were found 5000 years ago: http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2008/06/5000-year-old-figurines-found-near.htmlOr those recently featured in escapist 3000 year old wargame figurines.And if we go even more basic they are games, as in, all games. so they are probably one of the oldest things around really.

Videogames isnt some new thing. they are extension of games, and games are old. very old.

Strazdas:Why do you seperate videogames as something new. Videogames are a form of games just like Movies are a form of theater. And table top RPGs were around for thousands of years.even some figurines were found 5000 years ago: http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2008/06/5000-year-old-figurines-found-near.htmlOr those recently featured in escapist 3000 year old wargame figurines.And if we go even more basic they are games, as in, all games. so they are probably one of the oldest things around really.

Videogames isnt some new thing. they are extension of games, and games are old. very old.

Movies are separate from theatre for a long time now, IMO. They work differently. Even theatrical and cinematografic acting are entirely different. Same with games. While some games do represent classic "physical" games, some videogames have more in common with movies then tabletops (Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and all adventure genre), and some cannot be even imagined as actual tabletops (take Mirror's Edge for example and make a boardgame out of its mechanics). Videogames and boardgames are entirely separate mediums now, even if they have common roots.

Strazdas:Why do you seperate videogames as something new. Videogames are a form of games just like Movies are a form of theater. And table top RPGs were around for thousands of years.even some figurines were found 5000 years ago: http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2008/06/5000-year-old-figurines-found-near.htmlOr those recently featured in escapist 3000 year old wargame figurines.And if we go even more basic they are games, as in, all games. so they are probably one of the oldest things around really.

Videogames isnt some new thing. they are extension of games, and games are old. very old.

Movies are separate from theatre for a long time now, IMO. They work differently. Even theatrical and cinematografic acting are entirely different. Same with games. While some games do represent classic "physical" games, some videogames have more in common with movies then tabletops (Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and all adventure genre), and some cannot be even imagined as actual tabletops (take Mirror's Edge for example and make a boardgame out of its mechanics). Videogames and boardgames are entirely separate mediums now, even if they have common roots.

Captcha: book reading.

Yes, Captcha, I like it too.

Well, bob in the video said that while movies wre young we still had theater so "That counts", so apperently he does not think so.

ANd i didnt mean jtu tabletop games. i did mean that games, in general, like hide and seek, should be counted.

Strazdas:Why do you seperate videogames as something new. Videogames are a form of games just like Movies are a form of theater. And table top RPGs were around for thousands of years.even some figurines were found 5000 years ago: http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2008/06/5000-year-old-figurines-found-near.htmlOr those recently featured in escapist 3000 year old wargame figurines.And if we go even more basic they are games, as in, all games. so they are probably one of the oldest things around really.

Videogames isnt some new thing. they are extension of games, and games are old. very old.

Movies are separate from theatre for a long time now, IMO. They work differently. Even theatrical and cinematografic acting are entirely different. Same with games. While some games do represent classic "physical" games, some videogames have more in common with movies then tabletops (Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and all adventure genre), and some cannot be even imagined as actual tabletops (take Mirror's Edge for example and make a boardgame out of its mechanics). Videogames and boardgames are entirely separate mediums now, even if they have common roots.

Captcha: book reading.

Yes, Captcha, I like it too.

Well, bob in the video said that while movies wre young we still had theater so "That counts", so apperently he does not think so.

ANd i didnt mean jtu tabletop games. i did mean that games, in general, like hide and seek, should be counted.

I understood that. I just tried to separate videogames from "usual" games. What I wanted to say is: videogames nowadays are NOT ONLY games. Things we call "videogames" often just don't meet requirements to be a game. So videogame is not necessarily a game, these are two different arrays, which have some common elements - i.e., some videogames like multiplayer of Starcraft or Quake IS a game, but singleplayer of many modern videogames is obviously not - it's interactive drama, interactive novel etc. That's what I am trying to say: games as activity and videogames as medium are not the same.

Movies are separate from theatre for a long time now, IMO. They work differently. Even theatrical and cinematografic acting are entirely different. Same with games. While some games do represent classic "physical" games, some videogames have more in common with movies then tabletops (Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and all adventure genre), and some cannot be even imagined as actual tabletops (take Mirror's Edge for example and make a boardgame out of its mechanics). Videogames and boardgames are entirely separate mediums now, even if they have common roots.

Captcha: book reading.

Yes, Captcha, I like it too.

Well, bob in the video said that while movies wre young we still had theater so "That counts", so apperently he does not think so.

ANd i didnt mean jtu tabletop games. i did mean that games, in general, like hide and seek, should be counted.

I understood that. I just tried to separate videogames from "usual" games. What I wanted to say is: videogames nowadays are NOT ONLY games. Things we call "videogames" often just don't meet requirements to be a game. So videogame is not necessarily a game, these are two different arrays, which have some common elements - i.e., some videogames like multiplayer of Starcraft or Quake IS a game, but singleplayer of many modern videogames is obviously not - it's interactive drama, interactive novel etc. That's what I am trying to say: games as activity and videogames as medium are not the same.

Nicely done homage. Something that needed to be done. Sometimes it just takes a cutthroat business man to forge a new path and start something great. There's good money to be had in making people happy/better off. No reason to dismiss the individual based on ruthlessness when this is what they make (I mean, unless they did something particularly vile to get there).

Its Actraiser. One of IMo the finest games ever released on the SNES and a true classic.

That sounds familiar... although it conjures up feelings like anger, sadness and exasperation.

.......

...

Ah, found it! Oh, it's the second one I own. Actraiser 2 is one of my biggest gaming shames. For whatever reason, all my experience playing games leaves me the moment I start playing it. I have never made it past the intro stage(Yes, seriously.).... I'm pretty sure I'm not exaggerating when I say I have given about 20-50 tries at it. I don't know what the hell it is, from what I remember the intro sequence doesn't introduce any game feature or control scheme that would cause such difficulty. I just can't seem to gauge jumps, fight properly to avoid damage or learn from previous mistakes. It's uncanny, no game has ever made me feel like such a useless tool as that game!

I have to say, it's rather frustrating whenever I hear there's an amazing game beyond that point. I used to be content with my fluke purchase of crappy side scrolling brawler/platformerThis is likely entirely wrong but as I said, I failed to get passed the intro section... while doing my best to ignore people saying it's an underrated gem.

Sigh, time to fire it up again this weekend... I truly believe there's a great game in there, I just wish I could experience it one of these days.

My feelings about this scenario summed up rather well in a single imagePHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly8zLmJwLmJsb2dzcG90LmNvbS9fdzVkRENhcFlSdjQvVEQzcW03TWNvSkkvQUFBQUFBQUFBUFkvcldkSUNnMkMyOEEvczE2MDAvY29uZnVzZWQyLmpwZyIgYWx0PSJpbWFnZSIvPjwvcD4=

Actraiser 1 and 2 are completely different games. The second is solely a platformer while the first is a weird hybrid where you platform and build villages Sim City-esqe style while fighting monsters on the map and following a story told through your villages you try to build.

I really love the ending of this -- the idea that even if the people you looked up to turn out to be flawed (as they all will), you can still love their work and the impact they made. So, everyone bitching about Orson Scott Card's personal beliefs and boycotting his movie...well, one's political beliefs and one's game/book/movie/etc.-making ability are usually not related, and one can suck as a person while making amazing things, so yeah.

I have to admit, the lack of comments on this site in regards to his death was pretty depressing. If just a little insulting.Especially when he was responsible for reviving the gaming industry way back when.

Aardvaarkman:Would we have gaming websites and gaming culture today if Nintendo had never existed? I'd say absolutely.

I played computer games throughout the 80s and 90s, and never owned a Nintendo product. Before today's interwebs, we were already using online BBS systems to discuss games, and after that, USENET.

It seems to be a common theme among Nintendo fans that think the entire gaming world once revolved around Nintendo. It didn't.

But for many people in that decade that was all but true.

Computer gaming if experiences from those very people were to go by involved a good in depth knowledge of the system, coupled with command codes, and no guarantee that the thing would work.

That is not something that the average consumer would bother about, and considering how Atari shat themselves to high heaven with the videogame genre in general, it would simply become a passing fad for the North American audience.

Not to mention that after Nintendo hit the scene in regards to home console gaming, they were a monopoly in every sense of the word. It was either their way, or the high way, don't like it? go cry in a corner tough luck. The Nintendo we see now with Iwata, was nothing like the Nintendo back then when Yamauchi was in charge. He was indeed a ruthless business man.

Just look around the gaming sphere and see how many people have stated that they started out their first gaming experience on an NES, SNES, or N64 (in my case anyway).PC gaming while doing well, wasn't all that mainstream. Or at the very least as mainstream as consoles have made videogames. That evidence is still here today. GTA V on a pure console release made $1 billion in 3 days.

Remember that column Shamus wrote about the great video game crash? You should read the comments about it here and on his blog, the crash was well contained within the USA.

Not only that, the crash was limited mostly to the idea of domestic consoles. Arcades didn't get as big a dip as the console industry did, and the infancy of personal computers was still experimenting with gaming just fine.

But you know Bob. If he has to mention nintendo, he also has to point out how Mario is the most perfect game ever in ALL of its iteration and how Nintendo is the ultimate god of Gaming and we should pay tribute in blood.

That SAID... still in agreement with the rest of the sentiment here (if I thought MovieBob was all drivel I'd have stopped listening to him long ago). Great people are still people. Mistakes can be made by anyone and deification of someone is the most sure-fire way of getting disappointed.

I think the reason that Mr. Yamauchi's death didn't get so much media attention here in the U.S. is because his influence went against our firmly-held fantasy that his "type" isn't necessary- that, if you're creative enough and smart enough and ambitious enough, you don't need the likes of him to make your dreams happen. That's why we venerated Jobs so highly, because Apple was basically (thought of as) "his baby", and his fingerprint was on pretty much everything the company did. (I could make a pithy comment here about him being the charismatic leader of the Apple Cult, but in the interest of civil discourse, I'll decline.) That romantic vision requires us to disregard the fact that a lot of the Miyamotos in the world need a Yamauchi to help them grasp that first rung, to get those ideas out the door.

emeraldrafael:... Andrew Carnegie... But god damn do I respect that man and what he did for Pittsburgh.

and of course Bob missed the man's biggest contribution. Shadow Owner of the Mariners.

For those of us who are actually Mariners fans, it was a huge contribution. Had he not stepped in and bought the team, we wouldn't have baseball in Seattle anymore. While I'm grateful for all the things Mister Yamauchi brought about by his running of Nintendo, I'm many times more grateful for his keeping baseball in Seattle at a time when things looked bleakest.

In that same vain, you could say that he has also had a major impact on American baseball, considering the ever growing numbers of Japanese baseball players we see coming to the US.

Speaking as a man who has lived in Japan and worked for a Japanese company for nearly ten years, I am dubious just how pivotal Yamauchi was in all of this. The Japanese power structure commands an almost Godlike respect for company presidents and CEOs, regardless of their business acumen or decision-making ability. The company lives and dies by the whims of the president, and those same people are often given to making bad, often seemingly-random decisions. Certainly it was a bold move for Yamauchi to restructure Nintendo as a video game company but it probably didn't take a genius to see that playing cards, even at that time, weren't going to be big money makers for much longer.

I'd venture that, yeah, a lot of good ideas probably saw the light of day because of Yamauchi's go-ahead, but there are probably dozens, maybe hundreds of really great ideas that died in the board room because Yamauchi, for whatever reason, personally disliked it.

It's strange to me that a person who hated video games would be so revered by the gaming community. We're talking about a guy that, by the way, also never graduated college and inherited his company through no effort of his own.

Japanese companies are all the same. The president takes the credit for all the good ideas and decisions, but no doubt about it there is always some peon near the bottom actually coming up with those ideas and struggling to convince the president it's the right move. The idea that Yamauchi was some genius just because somebody else managed to convince him that video games would be big some day is ridiculous.

punipunipyo:"Sama" is such a strong word... "Dono" would have been better at that point... it's respectful, yet you don't sound like you are worshiping the guy... in the wrong way...

-dono is for feudal lords, and thus is no longer used. Technically it's more polite than -sama. That is unless you're insulting someone you think is acting too self-importantly. Most Japanese would find it quite insulting.

It's pretty disrespectful to put your book ad following a supposed tribute to a person's passing. I'm not saying you're wrong but the fact you wouldn't cut out your ad to your book even when paying respects is down right disgusting. You don't go to funerals and try to sell stuff so why would you try to sell a book after talking bout someone's passing?

Wow, very nice, I had no idea who he was. I guess im guilty of thinking Yamamoto is the end all be all when it came to Nintendo. Bob has an excellent point, while I don't play Nintendo anymore is hard not to notice there influence on the medium. Nintendo is the company every other company strives to be, tries to surpass. May Yamaguchi find peace and fortune in the next life :)

Also LOLS!!! Visionaries! Talk about a terrible show, why don't you do a show about that horrible drek, or M.A.S.K.

Remember that column Shamus wrote about the great video game crash? You should read the comments about it here and on his blog, the crash was well contained within the USA.

Not only that, the crash was limited mostly to the idea of domestic consoles. Arcades didn't get as big a dip as the console industry did, and the infancy of personal computers was still experimenting with gaming just fine.

Except that without Nintendo hardware such as the NES and SNES, we wouldn't have gotten Nintendo software like Mario, Zelda, Metroid at al. Games that went on to have a bigger influence on game development than anything else that wasn't DOOM. Having a level that scrolled smoothly? Mario Bros. Ability to save progress within a game, without needing level passwords? Legend Of Zelda. Open ended levels that reward exploration, and give you new abilities to play with? Metroid and Super Metroid. Analogue sticks? Mario 64. Z-targeting? Ocarina Of Time.

If Nintendo hadn't gotten into the console market, none of those innovations would have occured, and it is quite right to ask the question of whether this would all be here. Arcades may have still carried on in the US, but consoles were toxic before Nintendo stepped in, and it is console gaming that largely shaped game development up until the 21st century.

But you know Bob. If he has to mention nintendo, he also has to point out how Mario is the most perfect game ever in ALL of its iteration and how Nintendo is the ultimate god of Gaming and we should pay tribute in blood.

That SAID... still in agreement with the rest of the sentiment here (if I thought MovieBob was all drivel I'd have stopped listening to him long ago). Great people are still people. Mistakes can be made by anyone and deification of someone is the most sure-fire way of getting disappointed.

And Thomas Edison was certainly aspiring to become Nyarlathotep.[/quote]

I wonder if Bob picked up on the irony of his piece? Also can we really keep calling Shigeru Miyamoto a genius creator? He wasn't thought of anything new since Pikmin in 2001. Most creators would be fired if they wanted come up with a new IP in 12 years.

That was a very nice tribute here, Bob. It's so easy to forget that video game production is a team effort, and as much as we celebrate the auteurs who think up the stuff we like, there still has to be someone who signs off to invest in it, if they believe in the project's success. As for not venerating or vilifying the guys who make the stuff we like, I'd like to add George Lucas to that list. Yes, some decisions he made weren't all that great, and some paid off like gangbusters, but I'm just so sick of all the hate thrown at him for the prequels, or selling to Disney, or just anything in recent memory. He's still human, and so are we, but he accomplished more than most of us have, so we must keep that in mind when thinking of the brains behind our favorite passtimes.

captcha: Ford Owns WorkFord. Oy, you wanna talk about a guy who's vilified after the fact...

Except that without Nintendo hardware such as the NES and SNES, we wouldn't have gotten Nintendo software like Mario, Zelda, Metroid at al. Games that went on to have a bigger influence on game development than anything else that wasn't DOOM. Having a level that scrolled smoothly? Mario Bros. Ability to save progress within a game, without needing level passwords? Legend Of Zelda. Open ended levels that reward exploration, and give you new abilities to play with? Metroid and Super Metroid. Analogue sticks? Mario 64. Z-targeting? Ocarina Of Time.

If Nintendo hadn't gotten into the console market, none of those innovations would have occured, and it is quite right to ask the question of whether this would all be here. Arcades may have still carried on in the US, but consoles were toxic before Nintendo stepped in, and it is console gaming that largely shaped game development up until the 21st century.

You make the horrible assumption that DOOM is the only legacy of computer gaming. There's a very, very big reason why Computer RPGs are called that. They grew and were developed completely parallel to console RPGs and in fact predate them. And saving without passwords is also something that was on the PC way earlier than Zelda, as well. PCs and Arcades had joysticks before the Nintendo 64, so analogue sticks isn't an invention, just an expansion of a gaming feature that already existed. So... you're doing precisely the same kind of worshipping Bob brought up by attributing everything that happened on gaming in the last 30 years to Nintendo. They pioneered in CONSOLES, but not in the whole history of gaming everywhere.

SandroTheMaster:[You make the horrible assumption that DOOM is the only legacy of computer gaming. There's a very, very big reason why Computer RPGs are called that. They grew and were developed completely parallel to console RPGs and in fact predate them.

And until this generation, had far less influence on game design than console RPGs. During the late 80s, the entirety of the 90s and early 2000s, the RPG medium was defined far more by the likes of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger at al than it was Daggerfall.

And saving without passwords is also something that was on the PC way earlier than Zelda, as well. PCs and Arcades had joysticks before the Nintendo 64, so analogue sticks isn't an invention

They kind of are given that analogue sticks are different to joysticks. Joysticks move along very strict X and Y parameters. You don't get 360 control with a joystick, you simply move left/right and up/down. In most joysticks, the number of potential directions was capped. The analogue thumbstick brought with it 360 degree control, and with it the sort of gameplay in 3D that simply hadn't been possible before.

PCs required external media such as floppy disks to save. Zelda allowed the player to save directly to the cartridge thanks the the internal batteries within the cartridge. Meaning you could take your game to a friends house and carry on your game on his SNES. On a technological level alone, that was a big leap.

just an expansion of a gaming feature that already existed. So... you're doing precisely the same kind of worshipping Bob brought up by attributing everything that happened on gaming in the last 30 years to Nintendo. They pioneered in CONSOLES, but not in the whole history of gaming everywhere.

No, I am simply pointing out that Nintendo more than any other company has influenced how games are designed and made. Miyamoto is the world's most well known game designer. SMB, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Ocarina, and Galaxy are among the all-time most acclaimed games ever made. It is not fan-wankery to point out that back in the day, Nintendo were the company who altered how games were made. Your constant arguing that PC gaming is where the magic was ignores the fact that gaming on computers was as niche as it got until the mid-late 90s, and that the PC gaming community was utterly dwarfed by the console gaming community once Nintendo got it back on track. With that post-Crash revival came Nintendo's influence and legacy.

Yamauichi was a cut-throat dude, and I've never said otherwise. This isn't hero worship. This is simply pointing out the history of the medium. A history that would be very different had Nintendo not stepped in and risen to the top back in the 80s. It's simple fucking logic. Mario has sold more games than any other franchise in gaming. A medium, therefore, without Mario would be without its biggest selling franchise, and would therefore be a hugely different medium by default. Try to imagine where FPS games would be now if Modern Warfare hadn't stepped into the ring this generation. That's the sort of thing we're talking about.

ActRaiser for the SNES. It's really good, you should find a way to play it. It's like a mixture of Sim City and Ghosts 'n Goblins with a good mixture of RPG elements. It's like the 90s equal of Dragon Commander, it did so much so well that it wasn't as well heard of because it was too ambitious.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:Having a level that scrolled smoothly? Mario Bros. Ability to save progress within a game, without needing level passwords? Legend Of Zelda. Open ended levels that reward exploration, and give you new abilities to play with? Metroid and Super Metroid. Analogue sticks? Mario 64. Z-targeting? Ocarina Of Time.

Except for the fact that you are wrong, and all of that existed before Nintendo's releases.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:The analogue thumbstick brought with it 360 degree control, and with it the sort of gameplay in 3D that simply hadn't been possible before.

That's incorrect. Analogue joysticks with 360 degree capability were already in use before Nintendo's version.

punipunipyo:"Sama" is such a strong word... "Dono" would have been better at that point... it's respectful, yet you don't sound like you are worshiping the guy... in the wrong way...

I haven't read the entirety of the thread, so I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but actually, the -dono suffix is even more deferential than -sama, and is hardly used anymore. Think of it as the Japanese version of 'milord' or 'master' except without the usual implication of nobility/status.

Apologies if someone else already got to this. :)

OT: Since gaming's been around for so long in my life, it's difficult to comprehend that a driving force behind the resurgence of video games has died. This is a young medium, and its young audience sometimes forgets that or just doesn't think about it. Things will definitely change as more icons of this industry draw closer to their twilight years, both aspects of the games they make and the habits of this industry as a whole. But as Rath's Critical Intel article has stated, it will be, if nothing else, interesting to see what these people create as their lives progress.

Rastrelly:It's the last Moviebob video I watched. You don't put ads to the end of post-mortem video. Never.

How far does this principle extend? Like, when Comedy Central did a tribute video for Greg Giraldo, they played commercials as usual, and some of those commercial benefited Comedy Central, like ads for the Daily Show. Do you boycott Comedy Central for that too?